Justice Department May Free You From The Oppression Of Overpriced E-books

There is so much injustice these days you've got to believe the government just hasn't had time to get around to the particular injustice affecting you. Unless that injustice is exorbitant e-book prices. Then Uncle Sam has your back.

I'm 98% converted to digital books. I honestly don't remember the last dead tree book I purchased or read. E-books were a tremendous value over DTBs for some time before the major publishers got together to fix prices and rake in more cash.

The Justice Department has taken note and warned Apple and five major publishers it plans to sue them of colluding to raise the prices of e-books. The five publishers facing possible Justice Department action are Simon & Schuster Inc, a unit of CBS Corp; Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group; Pearson Plc's Penguin Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc, a unit of News Corp.

Publishers have for years lost ground to Amazon and its own set and discounted prices in order to sell more Kindles.

The suit brought on behalf of e-book customers, alleges Apple and the publishers colluded to shift e-book pricing from a wholesale method, where retailers pay for the product and charge what they like, to agency pricing, where publishers would tell retailers what they can charge.